


Heart Surgeon

by Bellamortsmordre (bellafarallones)



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams, Other, nonbinary zee captain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 06:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11411817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/Bellamortsmordre
Summary: She visited your bed for trysts, for dreams, and for regrets.





	Heart Surgeon

**Author's Note:**

> I love, love, love the Cladery Heir, and so does my dramatic, slightly emo interpretation of the zee captain.

The Cladery Heir leaned on the doorframe of the captain’s quarters. You were hunched over a table scrutinizing your chart- currently the ship was halfway between the Salt Lions and Fallen London with a hold full of salt-rock- so it took you a moment to notice her watching you. “Yes?”

Her smile was as odd as the right eye hidden behind a curtain of rust-colored hair. “I was recalling last week, captain, and found myself with a free evening. Care to join me?”

Ah yes. Last week. Now you smiled. This was your first confirmation that she wouldn’t mind your indiscretion to recur. You’d propositioned her over a glass of mushroom wine and watched her set down her fork and look you up and down. There was no trace of indecision in her eyes.

At risk of sounding like a contraband romance novel, your heart had stopped and only a surgeon as talented as she could hope to restart it. She had said she would be pleased to… keep you company, as she put it. The next morning, she’d left your bedroom as the clock struck six, careful not to draw suspicion from the crew.

Now she was the one propositioning you. “I would be delighted,” you said as you put away your map. Then she led you back to her own quarters: an operating table and a bed. You wouldn’t have even blinked if she wanted to have you on the former.

You were a little taller than she was, so she had to tilt your chin down to kiss you. Then she tossed her head over her shoulder to indicate the towels and bucket of ice water. Your eyes widened.

She removed her hat. “If you wish to indulge me… I enjoy a partner with cold hands. One of my little quirks.”

“Of course,” you said, and kissed her again. She tasted of salt.

 She visited you often enough in dreams, too, during those early days. It only made sense. Weeks out at zee, and the waves scoured your mind clean of everything but itself and the faces of the people with you. Some dreams were of flesh, reminding you of the parts of the Cladery Heir you so rarely had the occasion to see and leaving you gasping when you woke up, but others were less simple.

Sometimes you dreamed that you were standing at the rail, looking out into the darkness. Only the occasional fin of something ghostly pale and unidentifiable broke the mirrored surface of the water. The Cladery Heir appeared by your side. She touched your hand lightly to draw your attention, but when you looked up at her she was gone and you were no longer dreaming.

Other times you dreamt you were observing her in surgery. The blood oozing out beneath her scalpel was distasteful, but something about the steadiness of her hands appealed to you. Perhaps she was operating on something benthic and inhuman, or perhaps a prisoner, someone with their head thrown back and a morphine-soaked rag in their gaping mouth to keep them still. She kept a good stock of the liquid end to suffering in a locked jar in a locked trunk. You watched with wide eyes and infatuation, but she never turned to look at you, not even as you drifted back to consciousness.

Unfortunately, after too few trysts for your infatuation to have worn off, you made the mistake of pressing her about her father. You were dining together when you probed too far, she set down her knife. “No.”

“What?”

“No, no, no. You can’t manage me for yourself. You can’t have my inheritance or my Heart.”

“I don’t want your inheritance!”

She looked sharply at you. The Heart was her birthright ship, you remembered, not her love or whatever fleshy thing beat in her chest.

“Please, forget I said anything.”

“I have no further use of you, Captain.” She stood up jerkily, pulled her coat back on, and stormed out of the captain’s quarters. You chased her down through two decks, pleading, drawing the attention of the crew. Nobody got in the way of her pounding black boots, knowing that here was a woman who carried knives and knew how to use them. You tried to grab her shoulder as she reached the operating room door, but she threw you off. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you. And I can make my fortune anywhere.” Then she slammed the door in your face and locked it.

“Please, please, please.” You hammered pathetically on it with your fists. If only half the crew wasn’t standing behind you. If it weren’t for their ears, you’d implore her to remember the hours spent in your bed. Whisper that you loved her. How could she possibly think you were using her for her fortune?

Eventually you grew tired of listening to silence and went to bed. You were a long time falling asleep, tossing and turning and playing back your conversation to see if you could rewrite it to end differently.

When you arose in the morning she was gone. None of your crew had seen anything, and you were miles away from shore, but her quarters were as clean and empty as if she’d never been there. Wherever she had gone, she had taken her tools and specimens with her. Your dreams, however, persisted.

The third day with no Cladery Heir, the third day of you stomping around the ship with your coat buttoned high around your neck and speaking to no one, you fell asleep fully clothed and staring emptily at the dusty ceiling. There wasn’t much else to look at in your room: no real desk, no bookshelf, just the map and navigational instruments you’d been staring at all day. The bed only had room for two if those two were very, very fond of each other.

Now you had no hope of not falling asleep alone. At least you’d picked up a pair of gray woolen socks in Fallen London that kept your feet from getting too cold.

The dream started out, as many did, with the zee. It was only natural. The waves rocked you to sleep every night and had forced their rhythm into your bones. You dreamt you were helping a faceless crew pull up a net of glowing auroral megalops flesh, but caught sight of something auburn among the chunks of gold. The Cladery Heir was clawing at the net like a malicious siren. Then suddenly your crew was gone and you were standing alone with the her, her long hair dripping brine onto the deck.

This was not a comforting zee-dream of good salted fish and calm waters. Still, a visit from the Heir was far more pleasant than some of your other nightmares.

“You lost me,” she whispered. “Couldn’t you have had me as I was?”

“I tried to apologize. You left me.” You didn’t look at her, just in case she was truly a zee-decayed corpse. You wanted to keep her alive and beautiful in your mind even if in reality you’d driven her into the zee.

“Really? You don’t blame yourself at all?”

“No,” you said, looking resolutely down at your boots. She was drawing your eyes as inexorably as the light of the roiling Dawn Machine, but when you stopped resisting and looked up she was gone.

Finally, after weeks more of such nights, you reached Fallen London. If the Cladery Heir had survived, this was where she might be. You had first met her here, after all. Unfortunately, none of the people you asked in the market or in the pubs had seen her, and you rented a room in the Blind Helmsman having resigned yourself to continual interrupted sleep. To be honest, the nightmares of Cladery corpses weren’t nearly so bad as the dreams from which you awoke uncomfortably aroused and guilty that your subconscious roped the woman who’d abandoned you into such things.

You awoke in your rented bed in the early hours of morning. Damnit, this was supposed to be a restful night. Someone was kneeling over your torso, illuminated in the glow of an old-fashioned gas lantern that wasn’t on the nightstand when you went to sleep. A female someone. Someone with rust-colored hair and a heavy green jacket. Someone holding a scalpel.

You shrieked. It was the Cladery Heir, back from a watery grave, back from your many pathetic, desperate dreams. You tried to throw her off, but her left hand pinned your shoulder down. The scalpel in her right didn’t even quiver.

“I’m not going to hurt you, captain. I think you know me to be more skillful than that.” Her clever fingers made short work of the buttons on your shirt, half-undressing you in a cruel parody of the last time you were this close. This time, however, her gaze was not desirous. She ran one fingertip down the center of your chest over your sternum. “I could remove it, you know.”

“What?”

“Think about it. A little scar, right here, just over your heart, and you’d be free of me forever. If you wanted I could free you from ever loving _anyone_ again.”

Ever so gently, you pushed her hand away. “I don’t want to be free of you. Maybe someday, but not now, and I’d never want to be free of love.”

She dropped the scalpel onto your bedside table with a clatter. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” You were breathing hard and pumping with adrenaline from the terrified awakening, but not too far gone to register that she looks disheveled and exhausted. The lamplight illuminated dark hollows under her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have expected as much.” She clambered off you to sit cross-legged at the end of the bed, picking at her nails instead of looking at you. “I have always… admired your steadfastness.”

“How did you find me?”

“Half your crew was sitting around downstairs and greeted me when I arrived. Apparently you’ve been screaming my name in your sleep? You must have horrible nightmares, Captain, I’m very sorry.”

“I’m sorry I drove you away.”

“It’s alright. You were… you were right. I met him myself. My real father.”

“How did it go?”

“He’s a nice guy. Human, as you said. He told me how he met my mother.” The way she stopped after she says that told you that you won’t hear the whole story. Still, there was a smile playing around the corners of her mouth that you quite liked. “Your crew told me some embarrassing things about you when I bought them drinks.”

You buried your face in your hands. To get her back and then to lose her again because of your own irritating affection.

“No, no, it’s almost endearing. And more importantly, having let your emotions get the better of you suggests that you weren’t just using me.”

You couldn’t look up. Even when her hand landed on your knee.

“I did have fun with you, Captain. Are you still in need of a surgeon?”

God, she was always so smug if she thought you cared about her. You cleared your throat and bravely made eye contact, ignoring that your shirt was still open and flushed chest exposed. “As it happens, we are, and I know that I personally would welcome you back with open arms.”

Thus she moved her things back into the surgeon’s quarters and your infatuation with the Cladery Heir continued outside the realm of dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell @ me on tumblr for playing sunless sea like its a dating sim bellafarallones.tumblr.com


End file.
